Martin said: “This applies to anyone who started university from 1998.

“You’re only eligible to start repaying your student loan in the April after graduation – often around nine months after leaving.

Martin Lewis (Image: ITV)

“In that April you repay 9% of everything you earn over £21,000, but none of that really matters - if you started paying before the April, you shouldn’t and you’re entitled to get that money back.

“The problem is employees start repaying automatically through the payroll, like tax. So if your employer has the wrong info about your uni leaving date, or simply does it wrong you may’ve started repaying early.”

Martin added you can check your old payslips to see when the repayments started.

He joked: “But if you don’t have these details you can still call the Student Loan Company and ask them to check - although they’ll hate me for saying that.”

According to the ITV expert, 86,000 people overpaid this way in the 2015/16 tax year.

Graduates (Image: PA)

He said: “This happens because the Student Loans Company only gets told by HMRC how much you’ve paid once a year.

“As a result, people who’ve finished paying off their loans can still have money deducted up to a year later – this is due to change from 2019.

“It will write and tell you if this has happened, but that takes time, if you think you’re impacted call it and speak to it.”